When the health-care reform debate first raged three years ago, we came down on the side of the opposition.

That was not because the overall goal of improving the nation’s spotty health-care insurance system was unworthy. Even the most conservative person would have agreed - at least before Barack Obama was elected - that it was broken.

No, we opposed the legislation primarily because whenever government, especially with the likes of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid leading the way, tries to do such grand, sweeping things, it becomes a massively expensive mess.

Sure enough, that’s exactly what happened. The initiative was so laden with political favors and so corrupted by log-rolling in Congress that the end product turned out to be a formula for disaster.

That remains to be seen as the Affordable Care Act is implemented over the next few years.

The Supreme Court decision on Thursday settles nothing, as much as hard-line proponents of the ACA want to believe it does. It was as split a decision as could be - five judicial opinions versus four. And the justice whose surprising opinion made the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts, an appointee of President George W. Bush, no less, had to perform some notable legal acrobatics to justify his decision to allow the law to stand.

We never thought much of the “freedom” argument many conservatives have made against the individual mandate requiring all Americans to have health insurance. Rush Limbaugh’s claim on Thursday that the Supreme Court’s decision represented “the greatest assault on freedom in our history” is laughable nonsense and typical of the hysterical right’s “the-end-is-nigh” rhetoric about the Obama administration.

Government mandates all kinds of things for the benefit of society and only crackpots complain about their freedom being impinged upon. You can’t drive a car or own a house without insurance, so what’s so objectionable about government saying you have to have health insurance, especially since the cost of health care is such a major drain on the health-care industry, government and business?

But Justice Roberts’ rationale that the mandate and accompanying penalty for failing to comply is a tax, which Congress can legitimately levy under the Constitution, is hard to swallow.

If he had come up with a more persuasive argument, it probably still wouldn’t have won over many opponents who hate the ACA because of who promoted it. Indeed, Mitt Romney’s health-care reform initiative when he was governor of Massachusetts was strikingly similar to the president’s plan. (These days, of course, he portrays himself as a lifelong opponent.)

In any case, the insistence on the part of the president and many Democrats that it’s “time to move on” is just silly.

“Reasonable Republicans will know that it’s time for people to put this issue to rest,” state Sen. Diane Savino said. She also claimed the decision was “a huge political win for the Obama administration.”

She’s wrong on both counts. The Supreme Court did Mr. Romney and Republicans a huge favor. In fact, this may be the best thing that has happened to Mitt Romney. His campaign raised $1 million on Thursday alone and a movement to repeal the ACA has already been ignited and will surely rally around his candidacy. There are suspicions, not altogether unreasonable, that Chief Justice Roberts might have been aware of this perverse effect. We suspect that the politically astute President Obama might be aware of it as well.

Now, instead of having to explain to people why legislation that extended health insurance to all Americans was a bad thing and had to be eliminated, they have been handed an issue which galvanizes conservatives and all those independent-minded people inherently suspicious of big government.

Far from letting it go and moving on, they’ll rally ‘round this bloody shirt straight through until Election Day.

That could well prove to be the undoing of the president and Democrats, who may come to wish that they never indulged the debatable notion that Washington has the ability to “fix” a system that makes up one sixth of the nation’s economy.